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Thomas Ashton had been the Liberal MP here since 1895. Luton had been Liberal since the seat was created in 1885. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashton of Hyde, in the County of Chester, with a seat in the House of Lords.

The new Liberal candidate selected to defend the seat was Cecil Harmsworth. He had been Liberal MP for Droitwich, Worcestershire until his defeat there in January 1910.
The Conservatives re-selected John Owen Hickman, who had been their candidate last time.

A General Election was due to take place by the end of 1915. By the autumn of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest that election. Due to the outbreak of war, the election never took place.

1.
Cecil Harmsworth, 1st Baron Harmsworth
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Cecil Bisshopp Harmsworth, 1st Baron Harmsworth, was a British businessman and Liberal politician. He served as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1915, Harmsworth was born at Alexandra Terrace, St Johns Wood, London, the third son of Alfred Harmsworth and Geraldine Mary, daughter of William Maffett. He also had four younger brothers and four sisters. He was educated at St Marylebone Grammar School and Trinity College, Harmsworth was the liberal candidate in the 1901 by-election for the North East Lanarkshire constituency, but lost to the liberal unionist candidate. He was elected to the House of Commons for Droitwich in 1906 and he re-entered the House of Commons as the representative for Luton in a 1911 by-election, and continued to sit for the constituency until 1922. However, he did not serve in the government formed by Asquith in May 1916. He also served briefly as Acting Minister of Blockade in 1919, in 1939 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Harmsworth, of Egham in the County of Surrey. He became a contributor in the House of Lords, making his last speech in June 1945. Apart from his political career Harmsworth was a director of Amalgamated Press and chairman of Associated Newspapers and he published Pleasure and Problem in South Africa, Immortals at First Hand and A Little Fishing Book. Lord Harmsworth married his cousin Emilie Alberta, daughter of William Hamilton Maffett and his wife was born in 1873 and died in 1942. Lord Harmsworth survived her by six years and died in August 1948 and he was succeeded in the barony by his second but eldest surviving son, Cecil. Hansard 1803–2005, contributions in Parliament by Cecil Harmsworth

2.
Liberal Party (UK)
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The Liberal Party was a liberal political party which was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American, by the end of the nineteenth century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite splitting over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to power in 1906 with a landslide victory, by the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives main rival. The party went into decline and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections, apart from notable by-election victories, the partys fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party in 1981. At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, at the 1987 General Election, its vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989 and it was formed by party members opposed to the merger who saw the Lib Dems diluting Liberal ideals. Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II, and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown, although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox and his disciple, after decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it brought about the Whigs demise. As early as 1839 Russell had adopted the name of Liberals, the leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England, avoidance of war and foreign alliances, for a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston, and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s, a leading Peelite was William Ewart Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and this was brought about by Palmerstons death in 1865 and Russells retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government Gladstone won a victory at the 1868 election. The establishment of the party as a membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. John Stuart Mill was a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868, for the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Ewart Gladstone served as prime minister four times, called the Grand Old Man later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class

3.
United Kingdom constituencies
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In local government elections electoral areas are called wards or electoral divisions. Since the advent of universal suffrage, the differences between county and borough constituencies are slight, formerly the franchise differed, and there were also county borough and university constituencies. Borough constituencies are predominantly urban while county constituencies are predominantly rural, otherwise they should be designated as borough constituencies. In Scotland, all House of Commons constituencies are county constituencies except those in the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, the returning officer will typically be a local Councils Chief Executive or Head of Legal Services. The role, however, is separate from these posts, the spending limits for election campaigns are different in the two, the reasoning being that candidates in county constituencies tend to need to travel further. For by-elections to any of these bodies, the limit in all constituencies is £100,000, in the House of Commons of England, each English county elected two knights of the shire while each enfranchised borough elected burgesses. From 1535 each Welsh county and borough was represented, by one knight or burgess, a county borough was the constituency of a county corporate, combining the franchises of both county and borough. Until 1950 there were also university constituencies, which gave graduates an additional representation, similar distinctions applied in the Irish House of Commons, while the non-university elected members of the Parliament of Scotland were called Shire Commissioners and Burgh Commissioners. After the Acts of Union 1707, Scottish burghs were grouped into districts of burghs in the Parliament of Great Britain, after the Acts of Union 1800, smaller Irish boroughs were disenfranchised, while most others returned only one MP to the United Kingdom Parliament. The Reform Act 1832 reduced the number of parliamentary boroughs by eliminating the rotten boroughs and it also divided larger counties into two two-seat divisions, the boundaries of which were defined in the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832, and gave seven counties a third member. Constituency names are geographic, and should reflect the main population centre contained in the constituency. Compass points are used to distinguish constituencies from each other when a suitable label cannot be found. This is the reason for the difference in naming between, for example, North Shropshire and Reading West, in the 2005 United Kingdom general election, the House of Commons had 646 constituencies covering the whole of the United Kingdom. This rose to 650 in the 2010 election, each constituency elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election. The House of Commons is one of the two chambers of the bicameral Parliament of the United Kingdom, the other being the House of Lords, eleven additional members are elected from Greater London as a whole to produce a form or degree of mixed-member proportional representation. Constituency names and boundaries remain now as they were for the first general election of the assembly, the assembly is part of the Greater London Authority and general elections of the assembly are held at the same time as election of the mayor of London. There are 18 Northern Ireland Assembly Constituencies, four borough and 14 county constituencies elsewhere, each elects six MLAs to the 108 member NI Assembly by means of the single transferable vote system. Assembly Constituency boundaries are identical to their House of Commons equivalents, the constituencies below are not used for the election of members to the 11 district councils

4.
Luton (UK Parliament constituency)
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Luton was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Luton in Bedfordshire. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Bedfordshire Southern or Luton constituency was created for the 1885 general election as a county division of Bedfordshire, when the former Bedfordshire county constituency was abolished. Luton became a constituency in 1950. At the February 1974 general election the Borough constituency was abolished, 1885-1918, The Municipal Boroughs of Dunstable and Luton, the Sessional Divisions of Leighton Buzzard, Luton, and Woburn, and part of the Sessional Division of Ampthill. 1918-1950, The Municipal Boroughs of Dunstable and Luton, and the Rural District of Luton, 1950-1974, The Municipal Borough of Luton wards of Central, Crawley, Dallow, High Town, Icknield, Lewsey, South, Stopsley, Sundon Park, and Wardown. General Election 1914/15, Another General Election was required to place before the end of 1915. General Election 1939/40, Another General Election was required to place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to place from 1939 and by the end of this year. Leslie Burgin Labour, Ferdinand Louis Kerran List of former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies Craig, leigh Rayments Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with L

5.
Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde
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Thomas Gair Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde was a British industrialist, philanthropist, Liberal politician, and peer. Ashton was born at Fallowfield, Manchester, Lancashire, the son of Thomas Ashton and Elizabeth Gair, the Ashton family had been prominent in the cotton and cloth manufacturing industry for many years. He was educated at Rugby and University College, Oxford, Ashton was elected to the House of Commons for Hyde in 1885, but lost his seat the following year. He unsuccessfully contested the seat again in 1892, but in 1895 he was returned for Luton. The latter year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashton of Hyde, during the First World War he served as Chairman of the Cotton Exports Committee. Apart from his political career Ashton was a Justice of the Peace for Cheshire, two of Lord Ashtons sisters married Lupton brothers, Sir Charles Lupton to Katharine and Arthur Lupton to Harriet. Lord Ashtons first cousin, Helen Potter, was the mother of Beatrix Potter, the Lupton family are the paternal ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Ashton married Eva Margaret James, daughter of John Henry James and his wife Jane Ramsden Ashworth and they had four children, two sons and two daughters, Thomas Henry Ashton Hon. Marion Evelyn Ashton, married Major Robert Wood. Hon. Margaret Joan Ashton, married Hugh Whistler, Thomas Henry Raymond Ashton, succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Ashton of Hyde. He died in May 1933, aged 78, and was succeeded in the title by his second, lady Ashton of Hyde died in 1938. Footnotes Sources Legg, L. G. Wickham Legg, the Dictionary of National Biography, 1931-1940. New York, St Martins Press,1990, Leigh Rayments Peerage Pages Leigh Rayments Historical List of MPs Lundy, hansard 1803–2005, contributions in Parliament by Thomas Ashton

6.
Conservative Party (UK)
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The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently the party, having won a majority of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election. The partys leader, Theresa May, is serving as Prime Minister. It is the largest party in government with 8,702 councillors. The Conservative Party is one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, the other being its modern rival. The Conservative Partys platform involves support for market capitalism, free enterprise, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defence, deregulation. In the 1920s, the Liberal vote greatly diminished and the Labour Party became the Conservatives main rivals, Conservative Prime Ministers led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century, including Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Thatchers tenure led to wide-ranging economic liberalisation, the Conservative Partys domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to them being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservatives are the joint-second largest British party in the European Parliament, with twenty MEPs, the party is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe Europarty and the International Democrat Union. The party is the second-largest in the Scottish Parliament and the second-largest in the Welsh Assembly, the party is also organised in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The Conservative Party traces its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party and they were known as Independent Whigs, Friends of Mr Pitt, or Pittites. After Pitts death the term Tory came into use and this was an allusion to the Tories, a political grouping that had existed from 1678, but which had no organisational continuity with the Pittite party. From about 1812 on the name Tory was commonly used for the newer party, the term Conservative was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The name immediately caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto, the term Conservative Party rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. In 1912, the Liberal Unionists merged with the Conservative Party, in Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance had been formed in 1891 which merged anti-Home Rule Unionists into one political movement. Its MPs took the Conservative whip at Westminster, and in essence formed the Irish wing of the party until 1922. The Conservatives served with the Liberals in an all-party coalition government during World War I, keohane finds that the Conservatives were bitterly divided before 1914, especially on the issue of Irish Unionism and the experience of three consecutive election losses

7.
Voter turnout
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Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. Eligibility varies by country, and the population should not be confused with the total adult population. Age and citizenship status are often among the criteria used to determine eligibility, after increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1980s. In general, low turnout is attributed to disillusionment, indifference, low turnout is usually considered to be undesirable. As a result, there have been efforts to increase voter turnout. In spite of significant study into the issue, scholars are divided on the reasons for the decline and its cause has been attributed to a wide array of economic, demographic, cultural, technological, and institutional factors. Different countries have very different voter turnout rates, for example, turnout in the United States 2012 presidential election was about 55%. In both Belgium, which has compulsory voting, and Malta, which not, participation reaches about 95%. The chance of any one vote determining the outcome is low, some studies show that a single vote in a voting scheme such as the Electoral College in the United States has an even lower chance of determining the outcome. Other studies claim that the Electoral College actually increases voting power, Studies using game theory, which takes into account the ability of voters to interact, have also found that the expected turnout for any large election should be zero. Since P is virtually zero in most elections, PB is also near zero, for a person to vote, these factors must outweigh C. Experimental political science has found that even when P is likely greater than zero, enos and Fowler conducted a field experiment that exploits the rare opportunity of a tied election for major political office. Informing citizens that the election to break the tie will be close has little mobilizing effect on voter turnout. Riker and Ordeshook developed the understanding of D. Other political scientists have since added other motivators and questioned some of Riker, all of these concepts are inherently imprecise, making it difficult to discover exactly why people choose to vote. Recently, several scholars have considered the possibility that B includes not only a personal interest in the outcome, note that this motivation is distinct from D, because voters must think others benefit from the outcome of the election, not their act of voting in and of itself. There are philosophical, moral, and practical reasons that people cite for not voting in electoral politics. High voter turnout is often considered to be desirable, though among scientists and economists specializing in public choice

8.
Swing (politics)
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An electoral swing analysis shows the extent of change in voter support, typically from one election to another, expressed as a positive or negative percentage. A multi-party swing is an indicator of a change in the preference between candidates or parties. A swing can be calculated for the electorate as a whole, a swing is particularly useful for analysing change in voter support over time, or as a tool for predicting the outcome of elections in constituency-based systems. A swing is calculated by comparing the percentage of the vote in an election to the percentage of the vote belonging to the same party or candidate at the previous election. One-party swing = Percentage of vote − percentage of vote, examples include the comparison between the 2006 and 2007 Ukrainian Parliamentary elections and the win of AAP in the 2015 Delhi elections. The above charts show the change in support for each of the six major political parties by electoral district. In many nation states media, including in Australia and the United Kingdom, an assumption underlies extrapolated national calculations, that all districts will experience the same swing as shown in a poll or in a places results. The term swing makes reference in Australia, to wit in the voting system. The UK uses the two-party swing, adding one partys increase in share of the vote to the percentage-point fall of another party, so if Party Ones vote rises by 4 points and Party Twos vote falls 5 points, the swing is 4.5 points. For disambiguation suffixes such as, must be added where three parties stand, otherwise a problem when deciding which swing is meant and which swing is best to publish arises where a lower party takes first or second, or where a party loses one of the top two places. By contrast, a state is the direct equivalent of a safe seat. The extent of change in outcome is heavily influenced by the voting system in use. Some websites provide a pie chart based or column-based multi party swingometer where ± x%, ± x%, ± x% and this tool or illustration provides likely outcomes wherever more than two political parties have a significant influence on which politicians are elected

Liberal poster c.1905-10, Clockwise from the left: Joseph Chamberlain abandons his commitment to old age pensions; Chancellor Austen Chamberlain threatens duties on consumer items which had been removed by Gladstone (in the picture on the wall); Chinese indentured labour in South Africa; John Bull contemplates his vote; Joseph Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour (who favoured retaliatory tariffs) wearing top hats